The present invention relates to the field of business process management, and, in particular, to a system and method for executing a business process workflow.
A business process management (BPM) engine, or workflow engine, can be used to design and implement business execution actions. As just one example, a data governance system provides a tool that uses workflows to handle the implementation of business processes. Specific stages can be designed into the workflow to address and implement approval processes for the business.
In such systems to handle business approvals, it is possible that different approval paths may need to be implemented based upon differences within the organizational structure of the business. Conventionally, this situation is handled by implementing a separately designed workflow (or workflow portion) for each and every organizational variant that requires different approval processing for the organization. For example, requests to introduce a new product of a first type may require the approvals of certain managers A and B, requiring a workflow for these types of requests to be designed that specifically includes approval processing stages for these managers. Meanwhile, requests to introduce a new product of a second type may require the approvals of other managers C and D, requiring an entirely different workflow for these types of requests to be designed that specifically includes approval processing stages for these other managers. Even though these two processing flows are either very similar or identical, the differences in the specific organizational entities required for approvals would necessitate different workflows to be created.
In a very large organization, this problem is magnified by the sheer number of possibly redundant workflows that would need to be created to handle approval processes for the business. The inefficiencies are further increased by the fact that organizational hierarchies do not remain static, but often change due to movements of people and departments as a result of personnel changes and business reorganizations—which may require wholesale creation or editing of even more workflows.
Accordingly, there remains a need to address the drawbacks and limitations discussed above with regards to the standard approaches to implement business workflows.